“I figured parents come and go, families are weird and undependable, but a true friend is a rare and beautiful thing.”
“Leaves are love letters that fall from the sky, in the brightest of colors see how they fly! from the fall/autumn poem, Step Out in Color!”
“I was dying of thirst when you gave me water, yet it was not the water alone that saved me. It was the strength of the hands that gave it.”
“Women got along. Their very tolerance was their insulation against isolation.”
“Christ taught that there was a difference between divine love and human love. Human love depends upon the one who is loved. If you meet my needs, if I find you attractive, and if our personalities are compatible, I will love you. Understandingly, human love changes... In contrast, divine love depends upon the lover; divine love says I can go on loving you even if you have stopped loving me. Divine love is based on a decision that continues even if the one who is loved changes. Divine love says, You cannot make me stop loving you. In this context, read Christ s words: But i say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you (Luke 6:27-28). This kind of love even loves enemies. And if we want to know whether such tough love will really be worth the cost, Christ continues, But love your enemies, and do good , and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and evil (v.35). Your reward will be great! So often we pray, O God, make me godly. We want to be like God. Then God sends a difficult person into our life - perhaps a quarrelsome coworker - and we complain, insisting that He remove the thorn from us. But these trials are given to is that we might become godly . You have it from Christ Himself. Your reward shall be great! - from Your Eternal Reward by Erwin Lutzer”
“Once you have fallen off the edge like all of us have, you will never stop falling. And as you fall you will hold on to other falling people. The sooner you understand that the better. This place where we live, where we made our home, is the place of falling people. Here there is baqeeqat. Arre, even we aren t real. We don t really exist”
“You’re too hard on yourself,’she said. ‘You can do long-term love. You’ve done it better than anyone I know.’ ‘How? My longest relationship was two years and that was over when I was twenty-four.’ ‘I’m talking about you and me, ’she said”
“It makes me think. Maybe the only meaning to life is that which we get from each other.”
“He was thinking of the irony of friendship — so strong it is, and so fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part in the open stream. Nature has no use for us: she has cut her stuff differently. Dutiful sons, loving husbands, responsible fathers these are what she wants, and if we are friends it must be in our spare time. Abram and Sarai were sorrowful, yet their seed became as sand of the sea, and distracts the politics of Europe at this moment. But a few verses of poetry is all that survives of David and Jonathan.”
“Boys can break your heart and betray you, but not in the same stinging way girls can.”
“So,” I said, making a second attempt at nonchalance, “are you and Thalia, er…?” Reyna raised an eyebrow. “Involved romantically?” “Well, I just…I mean…Um…” Oh, very smooth, Apollo. Have I mentioned I was once the god of poetry? Reyna rolled her eyes. “If I had a denarius for every time I got that question…Aside from the fact that Thalia is in the Hunters, and thus sworn to celibacy…Why does a strong friendship always have to progress to romance? Thalia’s an excellent friend. Why would I risk messing that up?” “Uh—” “That was a rhetorical question,” Reyna added. “I do not need a response.” “I know what rhetorical means.” I made a mental note to double-check the word’s definition with Socrates the next time I was in Greece.”
“The treasure is not only gold, silver, gems, etc. The most important treasure of this world is family and friends.”
“A true family can find each other anywhere. For genuine bonds, time and distance don t matter.”
“Flattery is the enemy of a real friendship.”
“There for me. I m so tired of that phrase. Where is there?”
“Sometimes life’s a shit boat, and it feels like nothing’s ever gone right. And sometimes the only comfort you have is the fact that other people are also in your awful situation. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll make them feel a little less alone.”
“His loyal and eager nature, brought for the first time to the test of love, gave itself utterly, and demanded a gift as utter without the reservation of one particle of the heart. He admitted no sharing in friendship. Being ready to sacrifice all for his friend, he thought it right and even necessary that his friend should wholly sacrifice himself and everything for him. But he was beginning to feel that the world was not built on the model of his own inflexible character, and that he was asking things which others could not give.”